Everton must finally offload Cenk Tosun amid a recent update on his future.
What’s the story?
According to Turkish publication Sabah, Besiktas were hopeful of re-signing their former star last month, but that a deal failed to materialise because Tosun wanted some money from Everton to cut his contract short.
Moshiri’s biggest disaster
It’s fair to say that Farhad Moshiri has had his fair share of transfer disasters during his time at Goodison Park, but Tosun certainly figures high up on that list, if not right at the very top.
Signed for £27m from Besiktas back in January 2018, the 30-year-old was tipped for big things by the man who signed him, Sam Allardyce, who said: “He is Turkey’s No 1 striker and has scored goals in the Champions League and the Turkish League but he is desperate to play here in the Premier League.
“We looked at the qualities of the player, his talent and goal-scoring, and his resilience, too. I do not think you can look any more than we have done and, for the price, he is the best in Europe at the moment.”
A big claim that has come to back-fire spectacularly on the Toffees in the years since.
In 60 games for the club in total, he’s scored just 11 goals and provided only six assists in that time too, meaning he has cost the club more than £1.5m per goal he has scored – it’s no surprise then that he was also shipped out on loan in recent seasons too.
Indeed, according to CIES, his transfer market value now is less than £1m – a real indication of the kind of decline the Turkish ace has endured at Goodison Park in his time at the club.
And, back in December, former Premier League ace Alan Hutton urged then Everton boss Rafa Benitez to have a discussion with Tosun over his Everton future and to try and move him on for the good of the club.
He said: “But I think that the only way you can really move forward and is to try and be open and honest. Have a sit-down with the manager and player.
“Say: ‘Look, you are not in my plans, you’re not going to be involved. You’re not going to be in matchday squads. All you’re going to do is train.’
“I think if you have an open and honest discussion, maybe that will help to move things along. If you don’t have these conversations, you just leave him to think and go in a bad mood. He will get in a huff and go: ‘Well I’ll just sit it out then.”
Given Tosun has not been in the reckoning at Goodison Park for a long while now, new Everton boss Frank Lampard must surely now call time on the striker’s time at the club and acquiesce to the striker’s demands and finally get him out.
Meanwhile, Everton facing a Rafa Benitez-esque howler…
